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An In-Depth anaylsis of Heimerdinger

(If you think Heimer could use a fix and/or a buff, please bump and upvote!)

The following post is very long, and is to be thought of more as an informative and hopefully helpful article rather than your typical thread highlighting (see: complaining) a champions general lack of viability. However, it is truly worth the read and I urge all to read the entirety of it before posting. At the very list, perhaps one definitive thread will minimize the multitude of others all saying the same ting?

Riot, we the community are extremely grateful towards you for the attentiveness you have displayed in listening to the community and balancing the game. Indeed, the goal of any developer post release should be to keep the game fun for everyone by making sure that any individual champion is just as viable as any other and that each is fun and unique to play.

Thus far, you have done a superb job. However, the process is a long and tedious one and it is only natural that the community may want to expedite the process. And so this thread.

At one point in time, Heimerdinger was a 9 out of ten. here numbers close to five are "balanced" anything above are varying degrees of "Overpowered," below being underpowered. We all want every champion to eventually fall between the 4-6 range. And to date, Riots method of nerfing OP Champs and Buffing those underpowered as worked. Sure in some closes a little clunkily and slowly, but worked nevertheless.

As soon as Riot realized Heimerdinger was a tad to good, he got his justly deserved nerf. Sadly, he got "overnerfed." That is to say, he dropped from to good (9) to far to bad (3ish.) Obviously, he will see a buff soon, one that will likely bring him to the desired "balance" of 5.

To quote Elementz-
"Heimerdinger moved to hard to place on a team – Just like Galio I should have put him into hard to place last patch. There’s no reason to take him over really any other caster imo. All he does is farm a lot. Expect even when farmed his damage is poor, his scaling is poor, and he lacks any form of escape mechaninsim. He lacks reliable CC and reliable burst."

What exactly makes it so that when one chooses to play the Revered inventor in a Ranked Game, one can expect almost immediate Que dodging from teammates?

And so the Issues facing our beloved Heimerdinger-

Firstly, THE BUGS: (As observed from past experience and the forum posts of others)

1)Heimer's Turrets do not always fire. At least twice per game, I will look at my two pets to see them sitting idle, despite the multitude of enemies within reach. Sometimes this is directly after I place them.All to frequently it is minutes after "Super Charge" has worn off, and I am being attacked by an enemy champion mere feet from my turrets.

2)Heimer's Turrets change targets without reason. It is not so bad when the turret is chugging away at an enemy caster minion, changing targets right before getting the minion to half health, (although this does make getting last hits with my wrench more difficult than it ought to be) but it is nearly rage quit worthy when they change targets away from a fleeing champion who has 1/20th of his Health Bar left. (And no, the problem is not that the enemy moves out of range)

Many would agree that fixing these bugs would take lengthy strides towards making Heimer once again viable and worth putting forth the money for that awesome looking new skin. Alas, our inventor needs more of an IQ boost than that.

THE ARBITRARY SELECTION OF TRAGETS-
Heimer's Turrets fire at random. I have no idea whatsoever how they designate their target(s.) It is not who is closest, who I am attacking, nor who is attacking me. I would readily believe that there is a method to the madness, but it is one that I cannot figure out, despite a forte for deductive reasoning and an earnest attempt to find out. One cannot expect to do well competitively when one cannot plan due to a percent chance that your Frost Shooting Turrets will not in fact target the Warwick who is trying to gank you because of one minion.

WHAT AM I FARMING FOR AGAIN?
Heimerdinger farms well. It i snot uncommon for a Heiemr players to have 300 minnion kills in any given game. But for what? As Elementz said, "even when farmed his damage is poor, his scaling is poor, and he lacks any form of escape mechanism." Two Turrets don't do you a lot of good, even with a thousand AP, when said turrets can be destroyed in a blink of an eye.

His Grenade and Missiles are... okay, although the presence of minions makes the missiles almost useless and his grenades are slow enough to only be useful close up or immediately after another, more reliable stun provided by a teammate.

BUT HE PUSHES!
And indeed he does. In fact, he did it so well back during the days of three turrets that he got nerfed "into the ground." Even now, he excels at taking enemy turrets. But at little else. A turret killing early game hardly makes up for a terrible late game.

JUNGLE FEVER!
Lets not go there. Yes he can jungle well, but why would you take a good early game laner and put him in the jungle? It is not as if he can gank effectively. (Sly look at Guinsoo.)

The Possible fixes.

It is clear that Riot as taken an active interest in making Heimer playable again. Gunisoo going so far as to ask the community to suggest ways to once again make him a good laner.

And oh boy have we had answers. I have compiled those most well thought out and listed them (heavily paraphrased) below.

0) Fix the bugs. (This isn't so much a suggestion as a threat [jk] We know you're working on it and appreciate your time and effort.)

1)Give him back his third turret.
By far the most controversial suggestion, although not because all many disagree, but because it would mean Riot more or less admitting that they were wrong to take it away. When he had three turrets he pushed too well. It didn't even matter that his turrets wouldn't prioritize enemy champions that were attacking Heimerdinger, with three, t least one of them was guaranteed to target in a non rage inducing manner.

So in order to reduce his silly good pushing ability, a turret was dropped and his grenades could no longer damage turrets. (Thank the powers that be on that last one.) Alas, he may now push at an acceptable level, but he damage out put as been cut down by a third.

Moreover, and most importantly, turrets make Heimer unique. Taking away his third turret (From 6 to 3 to 2?!?) takes his "thing" and makes it is "somewhat useful gimmick."

Feel free to reduce Turret AP ratios, or make them do 1/3rd damage to towers, but consider giving back the aspect of the Revered Inventor that made him different than other Champions.

Personal opinion on viability of suggestion - 9/10

2) Make his turrets prioritize enemy champions that our attacking nearby allies, further prioritizing those attacking Heimerdinger. (Similar to Towers.)

It is sooooooooooooooooooooooo (etc X 9001) annoying to find yourslef ganked, and your turrets (which could save you) won't help because of one caster minnion.

10/10

3)Improve or altogether rework his ultimate.
First and foremost, Passive CDR is a lie. Riot, we aren't stupid and it is slightly insulting that you think we are. Having an ability that passively reduces Cool Downs is the EXACT same thing as those cool downs already being smaller and only inhibits Heimerdinger from pushing his CDR beyond (actual) 20%, limiting build variety.

3.1) His ultimate could prioritize champions so that the slowing effect actually has a chance of saving him. (His Ultimate would also, make new turrets built during its ten second effects fire frost shot.)
10/10

3.2) His ultimate could improve all of abilities. (Grenades stun area/duration increased, 4 missiles, more damage, third turret, etc.)
6.5/10

3.3) Whether with or without ultimate, alt can used to designate turret targets. \
A tad too good maybe, we want to fix Heimer, not make him a god again.
5/10

Regardless of whether or not his Ultimate is altogether revamped or merely improved, as it is, there is nothing "ultimate about it." Refreshing Super Charge is nice, healing turrets back to full health is only useful early on. Slowing shots are pointless when you can;t tell your turrets to stop attacking minions.

4)Improve AP Scaling. (Note, you would not do this to turrets if you brought them back to three.)
Maybe, all of that farm should be worth something. But one must tread carefully, he could easily become OP again. Perhaps a small buff, 5-10%?
7/10

4) Increase effectiveness of Grenades.
Honestly, Hiemerdinger is a champion is should be focused on what make shim unique, his turrets, not a skill shot stun
.
4.1)Speed up Grenade toss speed.
Once again, maybe, his grenade does have a large range, but only the stun portion of it is truly useful. It is easy to dodge, but might be to good if made dramatically faster.
6/10

4.2)Increase Grenade stun area.
(And add a smaller inner circle to the reticule that shows what portion of the blast radius will actually stun.)
Sounds good. As is, the stun on his Grenade is "unreliable" acting as a blind more often than not.
8/10

5) Improve Turret mechanics
This is what Heimerdinger is all about. His turrets are simply of to little use late game right now. Something needs to be done.

5.1)Give his turrets Survivability. (More Hp, More Armor/Magic Resist, scales with Tank Heimer's armor/MR [lol])
Turrets currently do die REALLY quickly, being of very little use late game. Three turrets would help do away with this problem. The question is, how much extra survivability would they be given? (By the way, level 4 turrets getting q00 more HP is commonly regarded as a joke by the community at large.)
- 7/10

5.2)Heimer can stockpile his turrets (A la temmo)
This speaks for itself. Helps Heimer in team fights, might make him broken 1v1.
6/10

5.3)Turrets fire faster.
This improves them, while reducing the effect of Super Charge, Super Charge being a novel, innovative, and all around good idea.
4.5/10

5.4) Green Turrets reduce MR by 2 rather than MR and Armor by 1.
Heimerdinger deal magic damage, so this does kind of make sense. Although, to be fair, his current Green mechanic makes him more of a team player.
5/10

5.5) Turret Range slightly increased (perhaps only during his ultimate)
Heimeridnger has a near auto-laning loss vs ranged carries like Ashe or Tristana who out range his turrets.
6.5/10

6)Heimer's passive is either reworked or increased.
It is a good passive, bot ultimately insignificant in the degree to which it heals his turrets and large towers. Perhaps double the effect on towers and heimerdinger's turrets?
5/10

7)Missiles prioritize champions.
Likely to good. Not a bad idea if this effect is only applied while "Upgrade!!!" is active though.
4.5/10

8)Missiles seek out champions "marked" by Concussion Grenades.
Some crazy burst, although the grenade's blast radius might be to large for this to be viable.
5.5/10

9)Heimerdinger's dance is improved. No really, it kind of stinks. For that matter, why not give him more jokes? (Looks at Lux's scheduled performances at the comedy club.)

IF I WORKED FOR RIOT...
How I would buff/rework Heimerdinger in an upcoming patch:

CH-1 Concussion Grenade - Heimerdinger lobs a grenade at a location, dealing damage to enemy units as well as stunning anyone directly hit and blinding surrounding units.
Heimerdinger tosses a grenade, dealing 80/135/190/245/300 (+0.6) magic damage to enemy units and blinding them for 1/1.5/2/2.5/3 seconds. Enemies who are directly hit are stunned for 1.5 seconds.
Cost- 80/90/100/110/120 Mana
Range- 925
Cool Down- Decreased by 1/1/2/2/3 Seconds
The reticule is improved, a smaller inner circle showing what portion of the blast radius will stun enemies. (That portion is also increased by 25%)
Grenade Speed is kept the same.

Upgrade!!!- (Obviously, there is quite a lot you could do here, this is merely my personal opinion.)
Passive- Removed.
Active: All active Evolution Turrets are healed for 100% of their maximum health, fire 20/25/30slowing frosts shots, and have Super Charged refreshed. (Why has that aspect of this ultimate never been mentioned before?)
All turrets prioritize enemy champions. (The closer to Heimerdinger, the more priority they are given, although Turrets would not change targets again until firing off at least three shots [so the enemy cannot just continuously change position to mitigate damage])

WOW, that is quite the wall of text I have written. I hope you enjoyed the read and encourage you to post your comments. Here's for hoping Riots gives this its due attention.

While the effort is appreciated and you gave an interesting read I must point out a few things.

A) This was all pretty obvious as the discussion of heimerdinger has revolved around these areas since Heimer exploded onto the scene.

B) I think some of your suggestions are well thought out and others less so. Increasing the speed of his grenade is a good, albeit old, suggestion. Yet why should the radius be increased? It's already fairly large and I don't think anyone has ever had a problem with the radius.

C) It is unnecessary to say IMO on everything. This was obviously your opinion.

D) The underlying thing here that bothers me the most is that your analysis leads to the wrong conclusion. It sounds like you really want a complete rework--some skills changed/removed. I would be interested to hear what you can say about that. Champions with proxies like Heimer are absurdly hard to balance with numbers and more must be paid attention to concept.

Heimer would push too well with three turrets. The reason why Heimer was considered OP was that he was almost guaranteed to take down mid tower, maybe two, denying the mid carry hard without whoever was laning against him being able to do a thing. Lane phase basically became a game of "how many hits can I get in on that Heimer turret before he grenades and rockets me in the face". With two turrets his laning is manageable, but everything else about him sucks now.

Well after reading it, i admit i like your ideas. To be honest i cant think of any thing to add to it, but just note that heimer might be weak in high elo, he can still wreck low elo players.

His insane farm can give his grenade / rockets some good damage (i know elementz dosnt think so but he plays on a different level)

So i fill they need to be very careful with any buffs at this point, since i still do well with heimer in solo que (provided my turrets arnt being completely stupid). It wouldn't take much to put heimer over the top once again.

I like most of your idea's because i dont think they would do anything but enhance "the feel" of playing heimer.

Some where i read something that a red posted about trying to shift heimer away from his "hide behind turrets" gameplay style, and as much as i hope to not see this i think it might be something to take into account since i can also see where it adds an "anti-fun" mechanic to your opponents.

1) Fix turret priority so that enemy champions that cause damage to Heimer are immediately targeted until they move out of turret range. They should work just like towers do. Not sure if this is how it is "supposed" to work right now, but it doesn't always.

2) Make the ultimate better. Take away the CDR. Make it so missiles prioritize enemy champions while it's on, and turrets prioritize enemy champions, regardless of whether they're hurting Heimer.

@ Wuzseen. A)The purpose of my post was to coagulate all of the more prominent ideas found across a dozen other threads. I may have gone a bit overboard though.
B) I specifically meant the radius on the stun, not the total blast radius. But I agree, it is fairly large all ready.
C) Is that in your opinion? (Yeah, that was obvious, sorry.)
D) Indeed, all in good time. : D

So do the lot of you think three turrets is a bad idea? What if the AP scaling was further reduced? Does Heimer even need a buff in your (collective) opinions?

Thank you for all of your feed back and support. (Warm fuzzies in my heart)

Personally, I think they should make Rockets and Grenade Synergize.
Make the Grenade stun range work like Anivia's. Then have Rockets prioritize enemy champions struck by Grenades.

Making the turrets respond to allies being attacked would also do wonders.
It would make the turrets have meaning when there are minions around, and make heimerdinger a better zoner.

Lastly, I'd like to see his Ultimate cause his Q to have zero cooldown and give all newly made turrets the same Ice effect until the duration is over.
(Or make them immortal after healing) Just something to make his turrets not so fragile late game.

While pre-nerf Heimer was counterable, he still wasn't any fun to play against. He encourages a turtling style game-play in his group of turrets. When laning against him it's like fighting a never-ending wave of tanky DPS that just keep coming, also there is a mage behind them with burst damage. It's just not fun to be on the receiving end of that.

I think the focus SHOULD be taken off of the turrets and put more on his other abilities, even if that means reworking his entire ultimate, as the turrets were the annoying part to play against.

@JunSupport- Great idea with the grenade/missiles synergy. I'll edit that in to my list of suggestions.

@Vanilla Squid- Sure his turrets were OP, but now they are anything but. Furthermore (and much more importantly) Heimerdinger's turrets are what make him different from other champions. Its certainly no fun to have 50+ of the same champion with slightly different abilities and Heimer's turret separate him form the crowd. Variety is the spice of life and all that jazz.

If laning against his turrets is to tough, (which i do no think it is) than they should be slightly nerfed, not have their focus diverted elsewhere!